The Liu family didn’t agree on much. Nothing at all really, except my dumplings looked like insects, and they did. No matter how I tried, it didn’t matter. They stayed insects. Small lips with off-sized heads, impoverished bellies, and frail vertebrae threatening to dissolve in liquid-thin containers, but this is where the agreement ended. Each member of my wife’s family… Read more →
At the Middle Country Road underpass, just beyond Smithtown, the swirling snow began to melt as soon as it hit the ground. As the temperature fell, dark patches of ice formed near the edges of the parkway. Moving cars kept the road from freezing, but, as the traffic thinned, fingers of black ice crept toward the center. * * *… Read more →
“Are we ready? Okay, let’s begin.” Miss Grant lifted the arm and placed the needle on the record. A freshly mimeographed worksheet, the page still damp and smelling of purple ink, was in front of me. My pencil ready, the song began. I filled in the lyrics as I listened, “Leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be… Read more →
You aimed your silver BMW toward the only open lane at the six-wide toll booth and then handed the old man double the toll. When he took your money, you told him something along the line of wanting to pay for the next car. Maybe you saw headlights in your rearview mirror. Maybe you didn’t. But when the old guy… Read more →
When Father Andrew said the Last Rites over both of us, Nancy tried to stop him. “My husband,” she pleaded, “only my husband Jake is dying. Leave Jonas alone.” But he would not be stopped. We all know. Why pretend? God cannot be fooled. I joked: “I guess now I’m good to go, too.” Charlotte turned away. Nancy looked down. No-one… Read more →
The Muse of Paranoia, rarely seen, is not invisible. Her supplicants are distinguished by stares intent not so much on as beyond their objects of scrutiny: documents fanned in suggestive disarray, dining utensils speckled in rust, unfamiliar hair spooling from a faucet’s damp handle, small talk rendered hieroglyphic on sleepless reflection. The impassive expression of those inspired is broken by… Read more →
It’s a Tuesday when he wakes up and he realizes he is very much alone. The window, left open during the night, lets in a cool breeze and it ripples the Moroccan scarf she hung there many months ago. He glances around the room and he sees that the silver backed hairbrush that belonged to her mother is missing. The… Read more →
At first what people were saying was that it happened in a shop. That he was a stranger. He’d had a small gun that he held to her back. Attention turned next to the middle-aged man who lived out on the island. He wore a captain’s hat and was always driving up and down the causeway, his car filled with… Read more →
Occupy They weren’t really squatters, per se. He looked at it like it was payback, dividends from years of working shithole jobs in exhausting Wall Street firms. And it wasn’t so bad, better than jail. An interesting influx of dwellers. Late night poker games. Until she moved in. Until the chanting started. Until the first time he thought: perhaps I’m… Read more →
Stella Richter’s Boston friends said her Manhattan apartment reminded them of Miami Beach. They meant it as a slur, and she took it that way. She still played her father’s Bechstein in the corner of the living room every afternoon—Handel, Mozart, Bach—she knew the pieces all by heart and hardly missed a note though she hadn’t taken a lesson in… Read more →